ESL CEO: “PUBG will take esports to the next level in 2018”

Leading esports company ESL might be focused on established esports titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, but ESL CEO Ralf Reichert believed that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will help to take competitive gaming to new heights in 2018.

Reichert has predicted that battle royale games, such as PUBG and Fortnite, will be esport’s breakout trend this year.

“I believe that Battle Royale type of games, with PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds and Fortnite at the forefront, will play an incredibly important role [in the future of esports].”

The genre has amassed a huge following over the last year.

Despite only launching in March, PUBG was one of the best selling titles on PC gaming platform Steam.

The game was in early access for much of the year. However, it managed to sell over 13m copies by September and broke the record for concurrent users in December. At the time, 3.1m users were taking part in PUBG’s 100-player battles.

As well as the battle royale genre, Reichert also predicts big things for the mobile market.

“Mobile games, with Arena of Valor and Clash Royale, have the biggest potential to to bring esports to the next level,” Reichert said.

What does that mean for Dota 2 and CS:GO?

There’s nothing to worry about. ESL won’t be ditching their biggest competitions any time soon.

Reichert told Dot Esports:

“The existing top tier games will do well. I believe that specifically the Dota 2 and CS:GO ecosystems, with the sheer amount of tournaments and content created around them, will do really great.”

According to the ESL CEO, these titles already have too much engagement to disappear now.

“We believe, and have a lot of data to support it, which suggests that there is a simple rule: more content is better than less content.”

If that’s the case, top tier esports like League of Legends, Dota 2 and CS:GO will be hard to catch up too, regardless of the increasing popularity of titles like PUBG.